The ‘Arab Jew’ Invention of Bar-Ilan University’s Menachem Klein

When one contemplates the radical anti-Israel Left in Israeli academia, Bar-Ilan University (BIU) is not ordinarily the school that jumps to mind. Bar-Ilan is nominally an Orthodox religious school, although lots of secularists and non-Jews study and teach there. Bar-Ilan has fewer tenured anti-Israel leftists than do other institutions, but nevertheless it does have a few. Probably the worst is Menachem Klein from the BIU political science department.

Klein is one of the leading Bash-Israel academics who has a special passion for the idea of dividing Jerusalem and removing Israel from its sacred shrines. The 64 year old was the academic fig leaf for the anti-Israel “Geneva Initiative” of Yossi Beilin and the Far Left. When he was denied an academic promotion a while back, he publicly denounced Bar Ilan University as a thuggish institution.

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A member of the board of B’tselem, Klein seems to have never met an anti-Semite he does not like. He favors Israeli leftists negotiating peace with Palestinians, by surrendering to their demands.

In recent years Klein has devoted his energies to resuscitating the old Stalinist myth about Arab-Jewish euphoria before the rise of Zionism and especially the silly pseudo-history around the notion of the “Arab Jew.” Invented by a small group of Israeli Stalinists led by Tel Aviv University sociologist Yehouda Shenhav, these people claim that Oriental Jews are actually Arabs of the Mosaic persuasion. Never mind the proportion who would slap you silly if they hear you calling them Arabs of any sort. Shenhav has promoted his view that Asian Jews are Arabs in numerous articles and his book, The Arab Jews: Nationality, Religion and Ethnicity, won rave reviews from Arab extremists and from PLO front groups.

Shenhav considers Zionism to be a form of colonialism. Indeed, Shenhav has long argued that Asian Jews and Arabs need to unite to fight Zionism, that old “common cause” of the communist party in Iraq and “Palestine” from the 1920s onward. Asian Jews and Arabs are, in his view, two wings of the same struggle in absolutely everything – except that Shehav has staunchly opposed the idea of compensation for Asian Jews from Arab countries for their property stolen.

Now years later, Klein tries to steal the anti-Zionist thunder from the Stalinists, but by beating the same old tune. The only difference is that Klein rewrites Jewish-Arab relations based upon the supposed euphoria in “Palestine” before Israel’s creation – not in Iraq – when the local Jews were supposedly Jewish Arabs. This tooth fairy historic revisionism is the focus of his book, ‘Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron.’ It is in effect science fiction focused upon the past.

Countless murders of Jews and pogroms against them notwithstanding, Klein’s proof is that in Hebron in 1929, almost half the Jews there were not massacred by the local Arabs. Klein then argues that not only were pre-Independence relations among Jews and Arabs in “Palestine” idyllic, but that the Jews considered themselves Arabs

in all things. Something even Shenhav never claims. The problems only began when “nationalism” made its appearance on the scene, and you will not be disappointed to learn that he does NOT mean Arab nationalism, something presumably Jewish Arabs could embrace and join.

From the toady Haaretz review of his book:

Arab-Jewish identity, writes Klein, did not only develop in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron. “It was a fact of life throughout the Arab world. By the end of the 19th century it was a self-conscious identity in the major cities of the east, such as Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad. In these urban centers Jews took part in the Arab cultural renaissance and local national movements.” …

Yet even then, in the midst of the looming nationalist conflict, the lines remained fluid. Jewish women worked in Jaffa’s cafes and restaurants as waitresses, singers and dancers. Jaffa’s young men flocked to Tel Aviv’s cafes and beaches, wide-eyed at the sight of scantily dressed women, unimaginable in Jaffa itself, and the Hebrew city’s atmosphere of sexual licentiousness. Older Arab men courted middle-aged Jewish women at the Casino Café, on the beach, which offered live music, weekly formal dance nights and a crèche.

Like a Graham Greene novel.

The fatal death blow to the bucolic paradise came in 1948, when those accursed Zionists declared Israeli independence. Clearly Klein, who wants Jerusalem to belong to the “Palestinians,” thinks the solution is for the Jews to go back to being obedient and easily-massacred Jewish Arabs.

3 COMMENTS

Klein is quite wrong – Jews did not take part in the Arab cultural renaissance, except in Iraq. There were some Egyptian-Jewish nationalists but Jews in general were not active in the Arab nationalist movemement – unlike Christians. There were some Iraqi Jewish nationalists but the Farhud 1941 pogrom soon put a stop to that.

A moronic "Bernie revolutionary" with friends from Code Pink knows all the answers. Everybody else is just "shilling" for Israel or some other evil entity (although in this particular moron's universe, no entity is probably more evil that Israel).

defaming the author, Klein on a personal-ideological basis seems exceedingly crass, it also undermines your credibility to legitimately and objectively critique the book, which was the original reason I begun reading your op-ed to begin with.